Chicken Whisperers to represent Bay Area at first-ever National Red Bull Flutag

In a nondescript building on the border of Palo Alto and Mountain View, an experimental aircraft is coming together under the cloak of night.

Hundreds of hours have gone into the project since June, time with friends and family sacrificed.

And come Sept. 21, all that hard work will culminate in a cataclysmic collision with the Pacific Ocean.

Representing the Bay Area, the Chicken Whisperers are set to travel to Long Beach for the first-ever National Red Bull Flutag, a zany contest in which five-member teams will launch human-powered flying contraptions off a 30-foot-tall ramp to see whose can glide the farthest. Events will also take place in Miami, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

A chance to skydive with three members of the Red Bull Air Force is on the line, but the Chicken Whisperers have their eyes on a different prize: breaking the 228.9-foot record set by a German team.

"We all design airplanes for a living right now, so we thought we had the talent to make something that would have a chance at breaking the record," Laura Shane, 27, of San Francisco, said as the team worked Wednesday evening to get its aircraft ready for a test flight.

The Chicken Whisperers' entry bears several similarities to a hang glider, with sweptback wings and no true tail. Altogether, the 28-foot-wide aircraft has 200 square feet of surface area, or 33 percent more than some advanced hang gliders, said Zach Hazen, 29, of San Jose.

"That's to help us get a lot of lift before we hit the water," said Hazen, an aeronautical engineer by day.

Even then, the odds of a long flight are slim, if only because of the rules that govern how wide and tall a glider can be. But for Hazen and his teammates, that's what made the contest worth entering.

"There is an artist in everyone who wants to make something cool, but in engineering you have to justify every decision. So you go looking for constraints that will force you into doing something cool," said Hazen.

"If you want to build a really weird looking hang glider-type thing, then Red Bull is a good set of constraints to work within. It's a good set of constraints to work in if you're not trying to fly, too, obviously."

The team is counting on its collective 31 years of engineering experience for an edge over the competition. They all work for the same aerospace startup and even have Bob Parks, owner of several human-powered flight world records, to call on for advice when needed.

But the Chicken Whisperers will have to do more than fly well. They'll also have to literally shake their tail feathers. A dance routine is a central part of the competition and the team has elected to do a number to Nicki Minaj's "Starships" dressed as, you guessed it, chickens.

"Luckily, we've got a choreographer that's giving us some better moves than the Chicken Dance," said Nate Herse, 31, of San Francisco.

Herse was responsible for pulling the team together, as well as its intentionally ironic name.

"I just tossed it out there and it caught on a little bit. Some people hate it. Some people think it's OK. I think it's awesome. We voted and it barely won," the mechanical engineer said.

Hazen was among those who hated it. He wanted to call the team "Escape from Alca-Jazz."

"When Nate came up with this, I said, 'OK, dude. It's simple. We can get costumes easily. People are going to get it. It's good for all those reasons, but I hate it,'" Hazen said as he pulled on his outfit for a team photo.

With a little more than week to go, the team was working Wednesday to finish a pair of winglets. Theoretically, they will help the aircraft fly straight and behave more like one that is 32 feet wide.

But the foam pieces weren't lining up perfectly.

"Flutag good enough?" Jim Bungener, a co-worker who stopped by to lend a hand, asked after several minutes of fiddling.

The team broke into laughter.

"That's kind of been our war cry through the whole build," Hazen said. "Every time we start to obsess on details, we're like, 'It's going in the ocean.'"